2022-2023 Final State Budget and Campus Budget Planning Update

FR: M. Monir Ahmed, Vice President of Administration and Finance and CFO

RE: 2022-2023 Final State Budget and Campus Budget Planning Update

Dear Campus Community,

The legislature and the governor’s administration have reached a final 2022-2023 budget agreement. Under the agreement CSU will receive a $211.1 million increase in unallocated, base funding, unchanged from Governor Newsom’s January proposal.  The budget also includes $81M for enrollment growth in the CSU, $35M for Graduation Initiative and $10M to support student basic needs. These allocations along with some designated increases for specific initiatives brings the total increase in ongoing funding to the CSU for the 2022-2023 year to $365M. 

The state has also provided one-time funding of $1.1 billion to the CSU for the 2022-2023 year, including $125M for CSU wide needs for deferred maintenance, energy efficiency and sustainability projects.  The rest of the one-time funds are designated for specific projects.  

A stable state budget is good news for our campus planning efforts, as we continue to address a budgetary shortfall due to the loss of tuition revenue related to a decline in enrollment.  We anticipate that the state funding will cover much of our mandatory cost increases for the upcoming year.  Although the state budget increase will not assist in solving our budget shortfall, it will allow the campus time to continue to work to resolve the deficit without additional negative impacts from the state.  

We are currently working to finalize the 2022-2023 campus budget and close the shortfall as well as focusing on multi-year planning to increase enrollment and resolve the structural deficit over the long-term.  We will be utilizing many of the same approaches to close the shortfall that we have in recent years such as accessing our reserves, continuing to analyze our workforce needs  as we fill vacancies, and using available federal stimulus funds.  Across campus, we must continue to identify areas where we can work more efficiently or expend fewer resources to meet these budgetary challenges and advance our highest priorities. 

We will be providing more information as the budget is finalized.  Thank you all for the ongoing work you are doing to support our students and campus community. 

Please feel free to reach out with any questions to budget@sonoma.edu.